“Cafe Society Swing,” a new musical that opened in New York on December 21, has so many good parts it’s a shame they don’t fit together.

The play tells the story of Barney Josephson, the son of Latvian Jewish immigrants who scrapped together a few thousand bucks and, in 1938, opened a Greenwich Village nightspot he called Cafe Society. A fan of jazz, he wanted to bring downtown the music he’d seen uptown at Harlem’s Cotton Club.

But with a difference: In Harlem, the audiences were almost all white (black customers were seated in the back behind partitions) and the entertainers all black. Even legendary musicians such as Duke Ellington had to come in through the back door.

The club and a sister nightspot uptown were great successes until after the war, when the House Un-American Activities Committee began its red scare tactics. One of Josephson’s brothers, Leon, refused to testify at a HUAC hearing and was sentenced to a year in jail for contempt of Congress. Conservative columnists including Dorothy Kilgallen, Westbrook Pegler and of course, Walter Winchell, used that as an excuse to attack Barney, who was guilty both by association and integration. Within weeks of the attacks his business dropped by almost half and within a year he was forced to sell.

Originally commissioned by the London Jazz Center and created by music director Alex Webb, “Cafe Society Swing’s” strength is its music. It features a first-rate, eight-piece band, which is a sizable ensemble for an off-Broadway production.

It has three remarkable singers in Cyrille Aimée, Allan Harris (who doubles as the band’s guitarist) and Charenee Wade. They perform almost two dozen songs over the course of the two-hour show, from Lena Horne standards “Stormy Weather” and “Where or When” to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” To their credit, they don’t attempt to mimic the singers they portray, but manage to bring their own signature soulfulness to the numbers.

Special kudos, too, to David Woodhead and Maruti Evans. The original Cafe Society was decorated with murals painted by Village artists, most poking fun at the high society gents and dames who’d eventually become great customers. Woodhead has decorated the set with art deco style banners that seem to reflect what surely was the mood and temperament of the time.

Similarly, Evans’ lighting of the tiny stage makes it appear far more spacious than it really is.

So, then, what’s not to like? It’s that play tells the story, where it should be acted.

The play’s conceit is that fictional characters tell Josephson’s story. Actor Evan Pappas first portrays a journalist who is assigned to do a hatchet job on Josephson, but who soon grows sympathetic to his subject. In the second act, Pappas is a bartender at Cafe Society. It isn’t until the last couple of minutes of the show that Pappas assumes the character of Josephson.

But in all that time, you never get a sense of who Josephson really was. He had four wives (who are not mentioned) and actually opened a second Cafe Society Uptown (which is also not mentioned). Absent Josephson, the play is also missing his passion — for what he did, why he did it and the reactions of those whose careers he helped nurture.

The script, what there is of it, seems only to get us from one song to the other. The reporter need only mention Lady Day and out comes Wade to sing a medley of her songs. In his next monologue, he says that there were rumors Josephson had an affair with that “high yellar” singer Lena Horne. Out steps Aimée to sing Lena Horne. It all seems contrived; a story to support the singing rather than vice versa.

Attempts to lighten the mood prove to be groaners. Barney was so poor, he said “For 10 years my mother served us nothing but leftovers. The original meal was never found.” A worker in his kitchen is “half black and half Japanese. Every December 7 he attacks Pearl Bailey.” The rumors about Barney were “all true. There’s no smoke without salmon.”

And those were the funny jokes.

The band and musicians make for a worthwhile evening for jazz aficionados. But Josephson’s life is worthy of something more than what you’ll find here.

In Tom Dugan’s play, “Wiesenthal,” the title character, Simon Wiesenthal (played by Dugan), describes a conversation with his wife, Cyla. She is ill and wants Simon to quit his work as a Nazi hunter and take her and their daughter to live in Israel.

Wiesenthal explains that he can’t:

“When we all meet in the next world, those who died in the camps will say, ‘Tell me what you did with this gift of life?’ One will tell of becoming a doctor; another a jeweler or a banker. When they ask me, I will say, ‘I have never forgotten you.’”

Then there was the time his 8-year-old daughter, the only Jew in her school, came home and asked why all the other children have family to spend holidays with. “Why do I have no one to visit?”

These are moments that will register with people of a certain generation. This play is important because there are other generations for whom this won’t register at all.

Unfortunately, emotional dialogue aside, the rest of the production comes off more as a dry history lesson than as an inspirational drama, lessening any potential impact it might have. The setting is Wiesenthal’s office at the Vienna Jewish Documentation Center in April 2003. It is his last day there and the show’s conceit is that one final group of visitors has come to hear him speak — or more accurately, recite.

And recite he does. He goes through his early days as an architect, losing and miraculously finding his wife, his time in several camps and going on the trail of and eventually helping to capture 1,100 war criminals. It’s all tied in too neat a bow, as though Dugan is a runner making sure to touch all four bases on his way home.

The problem is inherent in the one-man, one-set format. There is very little for Dugan as an actor to do. He tells cinematic stories with no visual support. He wanders seemingly aimlessly around for no apparent purpose other than to provide a modicum of movement.

Dugan as a playwright doesn’t help. To leaven the effects of the emotionally charged moments, he offers some awkward dialogue: “Perhaps you have heard of the Warsaw uprising?” Really?

Another problem is that Wiesenthal has lived a life so large it’s difficult if not impossible to condense into a 90-minute show. Moreover, much of the historical record seems unclear; Wiesenthal has apparently contradicted himself in several of the books he wrote.

Ironically, the story behind Dugan’s play — Dugan was inspired by his father, a soldier who helped liberate the Langenstein camp — is more interesting than the play itself.

It’s no surprise that the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” boasts Maggie Gyllenhaal in the role of Anna. She is a strong, intelligent activist and actor, a key player in this drama about marital love and infidelity. It’s the type of character Gyllenhaal regularly and successfully inhabits.

For the young actress, who recently discovered her birth name is Margalit (Hebrew for Pearl), it adds another star performance in her ever-expanding galaxy. Here are some others:

Gyllenhaal played British business executive Ness Stein in this eight-part mini-series that aired originally on the BBC and last summer on the Sundance Channel. Stein, who is Jewish, works hard to build bridges of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but as soon becomes clear in this spy thriller, it is a complex and difficult task. But the series and Gullenhaal’s performance won raves, with The New York Times saying she played “a principled but conflicted woman whose quicksilver personality alters from hour to hour and flashback to flash-forward.”

Gyllenhaal spoke to the Forward as part of her promotion for this film, revealing among other things, her love of Russ & Daughters. The film is about a time in history when women were treated for “hysteria” by physicians who manually manipulated their genital area. (“Hysteria” was considered a legitimate illness until 1952, when the American Psychiatric Association discontinued using the term.) Charlotte Dalrymple (Gyllenhaal) is the daughter of such a specialist and a feminist who hasn’t time for hysteria; she’s too busy running a settlement house for the poor.

Gyllenhaal played Lee Holloway, an insecure, socially inept young woman who lands a job as secretary to Edward Gray (James Spader). Gray becomes interested in her submissive behavior and, well… The film earned Gyllenhaal a passel of awards and even more nominations. The film essentially established her career.

Here Gyllenhaal showed she’s comfortable in blockbusters as well as independent films. She reprised the role of Rachel Dawes played by Katie Holmes in “Batman Begins,” the first in the Christopher Nolan trilogy. In this movie she must choose between Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and new Gotham district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). She makes the wrong choice. ‘Nuff said.

Gyllenhaal plays Ana Pascal, a baker being investigated by IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell). But Crick is starting to hear a voice, a female voice, narrating his life. It turns out that while living his life he’s also a character in a novel. It sounds like a farce, but was serious, thought-provoking and intelligent.

A star vehicle for Julia Roberts, who was paid a reported $25 million to play the role of an idealistic art teacher who goes to work in a conservative liberal arts college that really just trains these 1950s women to be wives. Gyllenhaal is Giselle Levy, the campus Jew, who feels out of place in the WASPy environs.

Gyllenhaal played Yelena in the Classic Stage Company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s play. It was the first time I’d seen her live and within the confines of the small CSC off-Broadway house, the power of her performance shown through.

“Disgraced,” which opened October 23 at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater, is breathtaking.

Literally.

There are moments when the entire audience gasps at something so surprising or disturbing on stage, it’s as though all the air is sucked out of the room. Those gasps, however, are the only sound the audience makes throughout this intellectually and emotionally engaging 90-minute production.

The play, written by Ayad Akhtar, debuted almost exactly two years ago off-Broadway, and deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

It’s set in a lavishly furnished Upper East Side Manhattan apartment. Amir Kapoor (Hari Dhillon) is posing for a portrait painted by his wife Emily (Gretchen Mol). She was inspired by a Velazquez painting of a slave and their dinner the evening prior. The waiter kept staring at them, the gorgeous blond American princess and this brown-skinned man.

Amir was used to it. In fact, he’d conquered the prejudice. He is a successful mergers and acquisitions attorney working for a Jewish law firm. His boss and mentor, Mort, befriended and depended on him, and Amir sees a partnership in his future.

But all is not as it seems. Kapoor is not his real last name. It is Abdullah. While he claims his heritage is Indian (and presumably Hindu), his family emigrated from Pakistan and is Muslim. But he is not.

He was in the sixth grade when his mother discovered his crush was named Rivkah. “I’ll break your bones,” she tells him. “You’ll end up with a Jew over my dead body.” And then she spit in his face.

Amir, who claims he didn’t exactly understand what a Jew was, confronted Rivkah the next day. And when he learns she is in fact a Jew, he spits in her face.

He tells the story to his nephew, Abe Jensen (Danny Ashok), who changed his name from Hussein though, unlike Amir, he still clings to his faith. He wants his high-powered uncle to defend Imam Fareed, imprisoned under the Patriot Act for allegedly funneling money to terrorists. While the Imam has good attorneys, “he’d feel better if there was a Muslim on the case, too.”

Emily supports Abe’s position and doesn’t understand her husband’s rejection of his birth religion. “There’s so much beauty and wisdom in the Islamic tradition,” she tells him.

Despite their entreaties, Amir seems unmoved, but ultimately succumbs, perhaps out of weariness, but more likely a deep-seeded affinity with his past. That visit will, ultimately, unravel his comfortable and tidy life.

He tells a New York Times reporter covering the hearing that the government has no case against Fareed. The reporter quotes him accurately, but identifies him and his law firm and makes it appear as though Amir is working for the defense.

That draws the attention of his bosses, and starts a downward spiral not only in his career, but in his life, as well.

It all comes to a head a diner party several months later. The Kapoors are hosting Isaac (Josh Radnor), a curator at the Whitney Museum, and his African American wife Jory (Karen Pittman), an attorney whom he mentored.

The evening starts off well. Amir and Jory discuss goings on at work. Isaac officially announces he will include Emily’s Islamic-inspired art in an upcoming exhibit. They joke about Amir’s penchant for $600 dress shirts.

But somewhere over the fennel salad, the conversation veers into dangerous territory, with Amir attacking Islam and ironically, Isaac, the Jew, defending it.

What is most fascinating here is that in the service of art Amir gets to say things many people — rightly or wrongly — believe but are afraid to say out of fear for the political correctness police: Islam is a religion of anger that allows a husband to beat his wife and would condemn him to death as an apostate. Jory agrees, at least in part, agreeing with the French for banning the veil.

The conversation, fueled by drink, becomes increasingly heated, especially after Amir shocks all by admitting to a certain pride after 9/11, “that we were finally winning.”

He confesses, also, to occasionally feeling an affinity with Iranian politicians who call for wiping Israel off he map. “And I’m saying it’s wrong. And it comes from somewhere. And that somewhere is Islam.”

Though fueled by liquor, the is largely civil. But that changes once Amir discovers that he won’t be made a partner, that because of the Fareed incident his Jewish bosses to no longer trust him. Jory was chosen instead.

Worse still, it turns out that Isaac and Emily had a one-night stand while in Europe at an art show. Amir’s rage takes the evening to a heightened and provocative level, with actions at once understandable, unacceptable and ultimately sad.

Dhillon is absolutely superb as Kapoor, a man whose emotional and intellectuals selves are at odds. He is likely a sympathetic figure for Jewish audience members, who understand what it is to be an outsider, to change one’s name to fit in and succeed. In some ways, they also may empathize with his inability to completely overcome his upbringing.

The other actors are equally proficient, especially Pittman, the one holdover from the off-Broadway production. Like Kapoor, she is brown in a white world and her nuanced performance makes it clear she understands the special sacrifices that need be made to make it.

Director Kimberly Senior, who directed the original New York adaptation, has efficiently and gracefully moved it to the larger stage.

The play is not perfect. There are contrivances that seem odd. Why, for example, did Kapoor speak to a reporter? How did he not notice the changes in attitude towards him at work, that his mentor would no longer take his calls? Also, while the brief Emily-Isaac affair plays a role in the play’s shocking denouement, it detracts from the main theme.

Still Akhtar’s play is so complex, multi-layered and totally engrossing, it’s easy to skip over (or not even notice) these ploys.

The tiny Triad nightclub in the Upper West Side of Manhattan was filled by a crowd sufficiently large to give a fire marshal palpitations. That was probably due to the fact that the night’s attraction, Brad Zimmerman, grew up across the Hudson, just a hop, skip and $14 George Washington Bridge toll away.

The truth of the matter is that it wasn’t the fire marshal who should have been worried, but the building inspector. Because the moment he began his show, “My Son the Waiter, a Jewish Tragedy,” Zimmerman had the place and pretty much everyone’s belly shaking.

“My Son the Waiter” is a one-man show, an autobiographical retelling of a life at once sad and funny. Growing up, Zimmerman had a great deal going for him. He was the best athlete in his bunk at Camp Akiba, hit a home run on the first pitch in his first Little League at-bat and, of the three colleges he applied to, decided to attend the one that accepted him.

He graduated with a degree in theater, but spent the next 29 years of his life as a waiter in restaurants, but working with a Jewish deli waiter attitude. A customer starts to flag him as he is walking to the table. When Zimmerman comes over, the customer says, “I’m in a hurry.” Zimmerman tells him, “So, go.”

Waiting on tables was a humbling experience for the college grad — and his mom. When her friends told her about their sons’ successes and giant mansions, all Zimmerman’s mother could brag about was, “If all goes well, I think Brad is gonna buy a book case.”

Zimmerman’s problem wasn’t that he went out on auditions and was turned down. It was that he didn’t even try.

“Never mind giving it my best shot, it took me almost 20 years to give it a shot. To use an apt metaphor, I was on the sidelines many years. I wasn’t even in the game. Fear got the best of me. Add to that how hard I was on myself. I had a friend who told me, ‘You’re the only person I know who can do a one-man show and not get along with the cast.’”

He ultimately went to a psychiatrist who told him it his fear wasn’t about failure anymore, it was about participation.

So he participated. He had the opportunity to work with top talent, including Joan Rivers, who called him the best comedian in his price range. George Carlin called him “F’en great.” He’s a big hit on the Florida retirement community circuit.

“My fan base right now is Boca Raton to Boynton Beach.”

But that’s going to change. He’s scheduled for a 12-week run through the end of the year at Stage 72-Triad Theatre — assuming the building inspector doesn’t shut him down. This is easily the funniest show to hit an off-Broadway stage since “Old Jews Telling Jokes.” What makes this superior is that it isn’t just jokes. It’s a life.